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Fear of flying. It's not silly. Really.

Tony Ramirez

Tony Ramirez

Single. True friend's.
V.I.P Member
I fly once to Toronto and back with my old church which was an one hour flight and for the most part I was okay. This was over 20 years ago pre 9/11. Since in the new church I have not flown since yet my friends fly all the time. I see people on social media fly all over the world safely. Even my yoga teachers travel the world and back.

I might be going on a retreat with my church in October. We are due for one. The last one was in 2018 which I missed because I joined the church in 2019. The problem is that the last one was local I think in new jersey. I am in Brooklyn. But this one is in the west coast I think in the mid west is what I heard from early information which means taking a plane which already scares me. I want to go but I just have this stupid thought that since we have not had a crash in a long time that we are due for one when it is my turn to fly.

I am also going on a local retreat with my friend on his life group and he is driving to Connecticut. I don't care what the stupid statistics say. I still feel safer with him driving or my friend Theresa driving then in some tube up in the sky where I can't get out except falling to my death without breath. Just looking at those people taking pictures and videos out their windows of the oceans with no escape and they looking calm would scare the crap out of me not knowing if I would even see tomorrow or be in heaven with God. Really I am serious.
 
I think it's more like a healthy survival instinct. It's like fear of heights. It's not stupid to be worried about great heights, it's just a healthy instinct that can save lives.

They should call it 'healthy survival instinct' of flying. Instead of fear.
 
I don't believe there is such a thing as a "silly" fear. We always have reasons and those reasons are legitimate to us and therefore legitimate. I took Xanax the two times I had to fly.
 
Fino said:
I don't believe there is such a thing as a "silly" fear. We always have reasons and those reasons are legitimate to us and therefore legitimate. I took Xanax the two times I had to fly.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Fear of flying is actually a common fear anyway, but even the less common fears are still valid to the person experiencing them.
 
Same here, Tony. I have several very good reasons to get on an airplane, but I just can’t bring myself to do it these days. This is a fear that I could work through with great effort in my 20s, but it has been more prohibitive recently, and I would be happy to never step foot on a plane again.

It has something to do with the scary idea of flying paired with the dread of feeling quite stuck in the plane itself and among so many other unpredictable humans. Some of the worst things combined - fear, claustrophobia, powerlessness, and mortal danger.
 
How do you feel about trains? You could always leave a few days earlier and take a train cross country.... and arrive in time for the retreat. The scenery is amazing!
 
People's fears should always be taken seriously.

As a kid, I was fascinated with planes, kites, balloons, blimps, and always dreamed of flying unaided myself. My family never really had money, so we never flew, and I couldn't afford to get a pilot's license. At Georgia Tech, they had a flying club that offered discount rates for lessons, but it was still outside my budget. However, the parachute club was easily affordable. So I took up skydiving. I jumped for years before an inner ear problem made me reluctantly quit. I accumulated 1000 jumps before leaving the sport.

I have had less than 100 conventional airplane flights. So I have more than 10 times as many airplane takeoffs than I do airplane landings.
 
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MC1Rcat said:
How do you feel about trains? You could always leave a few days earlier and take a train cross country.... and arrive in time for the retreat. The scenery is amazing!
Click to expand...
Thanks. Sounds good but I still rather just do it as every one else I asked said to do. I will be with people I know. Last time on my trip to Toronto I was with people I knew and we were talking, joking around. I even forgot I was even up in the sky. I even remember landing coming on my trip home listening.
 
It will be easier if you fly with friends to keep your mind off the hard part. Good luck... and I hope yall have fun :)
 
Well, last time I flew back from vacation, that was the occasion where the right-hand engine failed on the flight, which could be chalked up as an act of man, but not only that, we had the eye of a cyclone park over the town where we were vacationing, and it stubbornly refused to leave, which is unnatural given the usual behavior, and it was also contradictory with respect to repeated forecasts that it would keep moving, as is generally expected.
 
@Tony Ramirez

One thing that helped me when I was on plane trips
and there was turbulence was to think about when I
was little and my parents & I went to my grandma's,
a thousand miles away.

We went by car.
I had no control over the car. Sometimes the road
might be bumpy, but I trusted my father's driving.

That was what I found myself thinking about if the
plane hit pockets of turbulence. That it wasn't so
different from when I was in the back seat and
daddy was driving.

The pilot knew how to travel the bumpy road in the air
the way my father was competent at driving and that
analogy helped me.
 
I'll echo what the others said, there really isnt anything silly or stupid about having that fear. It's a common one, and it can have many different reasons and such, too.

I get really nervous and agitated myself with flights... not for quite the same reason, for me it's the whole "everyone packed in too tight" part, and the fact that I'm not in control of the thing (I'm used to driving myself everywhere).

How about some sort of like, sensory distraction or something? Like noise-cancelling headphones, to give a relaxing / distracting audio element. Something like that.
 
Ed Delano wanted to go to his 50th school reunion in New England, but he had moved to California. His friends said it was too far. He made it in 30 days, on his bicycle. I stopped flying for two reasons. I tend to use humour when stressed, and that can get people into big trouble with the TSA. We are supposed to be the stewards of nature, and aircraft are killing the environment.
 
MC1Rcat said:
How do you feel about trains? You could always leave a few days earlier and take a train cross country.... and arrive in time for the retreat. The scenery is amazing!
Click to expand...

To add to this, leaving from New York, you have fairly regular service to Chicago, from which you'll have several cross-country train options, and a cross-country train trip is something that few people experience these days.

Given that you're not working or in school and so may not be as constrained for travel time, it's a really neat way to see the vastness of the country as it rolls on by, and in the dining car you'd be seated together with other travelers which will give you the natural opportunity to meet and talk to others.
 
I've never been on a plane and never intend to.
Too tight with other people, too intense with scary sensations during turbulence,
too many things can go wrong which would only lead to my fear taking over and having a massive panic attack in those quarters.

No thanks. I've lived 67 years without traveling via a plane.
I think I can make the rest of what's left of my life without doing so.
No need to put myself in that much anxiety and suffering from it. :airplane:

Those who aren't afraid, go for it.
 
tree said:
@Tony Ramirez

One thing that helped me when I was on plane trips
and there was turbulence was to think about when I
was little and my parents & I went to my grandma's,
a thousand miles away.

We went by car.
I had no control over the car. Sometimes the road
might be bumpy, but I trusted my father's driving.

That was what I found myself thinking about if the
plane hit pockets of turbulence. That it wasn't so
different from when I was in the back seat and
daddy was driving.

The pilot knew how to travel the bumpy road in the air.
Click to expand...

I always think to myself that the pilots don't want to die any more than I do and that they are extensively trained and experienced professionals whom I can trust.
 
@Tony Ramirez - I don't like to fly but I do it all the time. We're flying to Tucson, AZ for a little vacation in April. I read books on planes and try to ignore everything else going on around me. I can totally focus my brain on a good book. I never drink alcohol on planes, either. I want to have a clear head in the off chance something negative happens.
 
For myself, it's more the fact that I am not the one in control of the aircraft. I am the same way as a passenger in a car. I need that control. I fly frequently, helicopter and fixed wing doing medical transports of infants. One part of my brain is the logic center telling me that this is the safest way to travel, every aspect is checked and rechecked by the pilot and crew. The other part of the brain, the fear center, is telling me "Well, if I do crash, it will be like someone switching off a light switch. I won't even know I've died." I know, a bit morbid, but so far, the logic center has been stronger than the fear center. ;)
 
Helicopters require extra maintenance. A helicopter pilot told me a helicopter is a collection of parts flying in loose formation
 
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